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OTTAWA —The contrast could not have been sharper. And it wasn’t just the outfits — civvies vs. full dress uniform.

Two retired army generals in civilian clothes came to Parliament this week to tell a senate committee studying harassment in the RCMP that it is damn hard work to change the culture of an organization — especially one where rank and stripes on the arm count for everything.

Once professional values and ethics break down and a bullying culture sets in, it takes years to fix and is a constant work-in-progress, said former Lieut.-Generals Andrew Leslie and Mike Jeffery.

“It’s all about leadership all the time,” said Leslie.

They should know.

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The 1993 torture and murder of a 16-year-old Somali youth and the military leadership’s efforts at cover-up at a public inquiry that ensued left the Canadian Forces’ reputation in tatters.

The inquiry concluded that military leadership and organizational discipline had “crumbled.”

“When faced with what was clearly a crisis, the leadership of the Canadian Forces was slow to respond and resistant to change,” said Jeffery.

“There was a belief that the institution was sound and that the problems were only a few bad apples. It took time to come to grips with the issue, with the result that the leadership was seen as lacking and there was a critical loss of public confidence. This forced change upon the Canadian Forces.”

Jeffery and Leslie said that even though many officers embraced the need to overhaul training, professional standards and conduct from top to bottom, the military could not have recovered without constant, external, independent oversight driven by the government and respected civilians appointed to ensure they didn’t fail.

“We were held to account by the minister's monitoring committee and five other committees that kept watch over us for over six years,” said Jeffery.

The retired generals were unequivocal: outside watchdogs were needed to push, prod and drive change and an inside ombudsman office should act as arbiter.

The military still has its problems, they conceded, but drastically fewer. In the 10-year period from 2002, the total number of harassment cases reported, investigated and determined to be founded or unfounded was 513 out of a population of 100,000 serving members, regular and reserve, said Leslie. Of those 513 cases, 31 — or six per cent — were sexual harassment complaints. “A number were founded, and those were dealt with very seriously indeed,” Leslie added.

“Evolution sometimes can be painful.”

Then along came RCMP Comm. Bob Paulson, in full navy blue dress uniform and big burr under his saddle.

He went on the attack against some of the RCMP’s recent public critics, telling senators the Mounties are a target of unfair criticism by those he cast as disgruntled employees out to unionize the workforce, or not up to the job.

Canada’s top Mountie told senators that the RCMP is changing and that Bill C-42 — the law to overhaul the RCMP Act and give him more powers to swiftly discipline those he called “bad apples” — gives him all the tools he needs. It enacts new procedures for outside police forces to investigate Mounties accused of criminal offences. And it gives more power and resources to the civilian-led agency that reviews public complaints against Mounties, but not internal discipline matters. The Commission for Public Complaints also occasionally initiates studies of RCMP policy, such as on Tasers or harassment.

Paulson warned senators a few critics who are whiners and grandstanders should not define the RCMP nor its problems. “Understand who’s who,” he said.

It was a dramatic end to a series of hearings which, along with parallel hearings into Bill C-42, got little public attention from Canadians and the news media.

But they should have.

Just weeks earlier, on the day when the country was consumed by breaking news that the RCMP had arrested two people in connection with a terrorist plot to bomb a Canada-U.S. Via Rail train, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews came before the same senators with Paulson and a slew of officials.

Within minutes, without any press release or announcement, Toews booted the idea of ongoing civilian management of the RCMP once and for all — a recommendation for a key check-and-balance that has been urged on the Mounties for years.

“Our government feels that these changes are not necessary for creating a revitalized, accountable police force,” he said.

It is a policy choice the government has been loath to state outright.

The idea was first proposed by a task force led by lawyer David Brown. The Conservatives had asked Brown to investigate the RCMP after allegations that the Mounties’ pension and insurance funds had been mismanaged and investigations were stonewalled by the brass.

At that time the RCMP was also bruised by the 2007 Maher Arar inquiry report, the ongoing Air India inquiry and the October 2007 death of Robert Dziekanski, whose RCMP Taser trauma was captured on video for all to see.

The Brown report concluded in 2007 the RCMP was “horribly broken” and made a series of recommendations to fix it, among them calling for an independent civilian-run board of management for the RCMP.

Brown wanted the Mounties to have separate employer status so as to give the force a measure of independence from the Treasury Board to take crucial financial and human resource decisions, but also to have its non-operational activities guided by citizens who would ensure it didn’t lose its way again.

By then, former RCMP chief Giuliano Zaccardelli had resigned over providing incorrect testimony to a committee on the RCMP’s handling of the Arar affair.

An interim commissioner, Bev Busson, a female Mountie who didn’t want the top job, came and went. The Conservatives named an RCMP Reform Implementation Council to ensure the Brown report was acted upon. Lawyer David McAusland, who chaired that council, pushed for a civilian board of management every time he reported to the government on progress.

When the Conservatives named Bill Elliott as the RCMP’s first civilian commissioner in the summer of 2007, Elliott was cool to the idea of a civilian board of directors as a cure for RCMP woes.

It wasn’t until near the end of his stormy tenure at the top that Elliott became persuaded it was necessary after all. Elliott publicly endorsed it, but by then, his own bullying behaviour sparked a near-mutiny in the senior ranks.

Others, however, had not forgotten the idea.

In the summer of 2011 as the Conservatives cast around for a new commissioner, the Canadian Association of Police Boards urged the federal government to “establish an independent oversight body for the RCMP, composed of citizens served by the RCMP, with the necessary powers to effectively fulfill its role, including the power to oversee RCMP policy, the RCMP budget and to hire the RCMP Commissioner.”

It was concerned public confidence in the Mounties was at risk, and believed civilian management would help ensure it would be free from political interference.

But Paulson had never embraced the idea.

In his job interview for the top RCMP position back in 2011, Paulson was asked three times by McAusland, then on the selection committee, about his view of a civilian board of management. Paulson danced around the question twice until McAusland said, “are you going to make me ask a third time?”

Paulson did not think the RCMP needed it. His view was a board of management would become “politicized” with regional and local interests pulling in different directions.

The Conservative government liked what it heard from Paulson. Here was a Mountie who agreed the force could withstand budget cuts, and was willing to carry them out.

The Conservative government decided to end the civilian leadership experiment when it replaced Elliott with Paulson, the 25-year veteran who had punched in time with both the RCMP and the military before that.

By now, the national police force was faced with a series of new scandals — an outpouring of harassment allegations, by men and women, who alleged gender, sexual and other forms of harassment. The public complaints commission said it wasn’t systemic, but reform and ongoing progress reports to Canadians were needed.

The answer, said Paulson and Toews, was Bill C-42, called the “Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act,” which streamlines grievance and discipline procedures and gives Paulson more human resources control.

Under regulations still to be drafted, it will rewrite the RCMP’s Code of Conduct to outline clear expectations of a “respectful workplace” and will strip away layers of appeal, so cases don’t languish in the bureaucracy for years. Judicial review will remain available for dismissal cases.

Toews said the idea of a civilian board of management is dead.

He cited the new powers under C-42, and said the RCMP has made “great progress” by striking a new internal audit committee and a new contract management committee to work with the eight provinces and territories that engage the Mounties as provincial and municipal police.

“With the passage of Bill C-42, a board of management would only create unnecessary redundancies and complications in the RCMP’s accountability and oversight structures.”

Toews did say he would not oppose a review by the same senate committee three years down the road, after the new law is in place.

The retired generals told the Star they didn’t want to comment directly on the RCMP’s plan for change, saying they were not familiar with the details.

But Cpl. Catherine Galliford, who went public in 2011 with her tale of years of harassment, is deeply skeptical. It was her disclosures that prompted a flood of similar stories, and led to an effort on behalf of some 300 women, who claim they too were harassed, to certify a class action lawsuit against the RCMP. Court proceedings began in Vancouver this week.

Galliford is not part of that lawsuit. She has filed her own claim and remains off-duty on sick leave but was not among those singled out this week by Paulson for criticism. She is not, she says, anti-RCMP nor anti-Paulson, and believes he is trying to fix things, but doubts it is possible.

Galliford said in an interview that the RCMP is fundamentally opposed to transparency, finds it “threatening,” and needs help from an outside agency with a developed expertise in dysfunctional organizations.

“I do believe if they bring in an external body, maybe in the long-term it’s fixable.” But she didn’t sound very convinced.

In the end, the bill championed by Paulson and Toews passed, unamended, third and final reading in the Senate chamber Tuesday night and now awaits royal assent.

The RCMP and the government say it will take a year to write the regulations to give full effect, but change is underway.

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